Obama’s Speech on Afghanistan to Envision Exit

A nice euphemism (not unlike clinching – to substitute “winning the primaries) The article is replete with anonymous senior officials who assure us about that “vision” as well as the GOP-es who oppose it (the fiends!)

That suggests that the meeting was akin to a pre-game rally session by the commander-in-chief: he wants to get everyone from Gates to Gen. Stanley McChrystal to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the same page before his Tuesday speech.

and discloses the big one

Officials said last week that while would outline a clear exit strategy, he would not tie troop withdrawals to any specific political developments in Afghanistan, which might run into opposition from Democrats in Congress, who are demanding benchmarks.

Hence the nostalgic illustration for this entry. Of course, unlike in the original version of this movie, we won’t get theories proving a connection between 9.11 and Iraq. This being the sequel

An official said that Obama plans to try explain the interconnection between the the stability of Pakistan and the nexus of terror in Afghanistan.

Which Ambinder qualifies as

An explanation that the American people would accept has proven elusive.

Don’t worry, propagandists! An Obama war is OK – as it has the Nobel Peace Prize stamp of approval on it!

I thought that since we are in the sequel, another funny reminder of the first movie would help

I laughed and laughed seeing this one! democrats say the darnest things!

One sane opinion is lamely and apologetically framed – from a family preparing to deploy one of them again:

“They should end the war and bring our people home. But I know the president can’t do it all at once. If he did, it would take him more than one term in office to bring them home slowly and surely. He’s basically picking up other people’s problems. It’s going to take a while for everything to be rectified.

“President (Obama) is on track to spend more on defense, in real dollars, than any other president has in one term of office since World War II,” reports National Journal’s Government Executive magazine.

I always thought that it would be during the following disastrous presidency that the mea culpas for the was they treated Clinton would come. First from the progressives, then maybe the others. I was wrong. They continued to blame him – this time for Gore and Kerry’s “losses”

And now, with a God in the White House I was expecting a continuous stream of: see, he can do what Clinton couldn’t” and pretty much got it.

Facts however are stubborn things and I can already see some chinks in that strategy.

where Laurence O’Donnell – now part of Obama’s network actually remembers 1994 – when a “vote to debate” was not deemed necessary as the bill (Clinton’s) went to the senate almost by unanimous consent. Listen from the 1:08 mark for some startling revelations bout Ted Kennedy’s role and at the 3:20 mark

“It was inconceivable – for both parties not to allow one of the president major legislation to come to a vote – and this is a much weaker president – remember – Clinton got elected with 43% of the vote and there were 43 Republicans in the senate, only 57 Democrats….so this issue of needing 60 to go in the debate is the most stunning demonstration of weakness”

When asked to point the finger as to why, O’Donnel blames…the bill “this bill, this idea is so unpopular in the US”. And then points to the 1994 failure and the determination of Obama to do the opposite of what Clinton did – take a bow from behind the curtain, Tom Daschle.t

Me thinks Howard Stern is gnashing his teeth these days – he’s missing from the type of hype he invented.

Personally, I regard this story as a sign of the times: there’s incompetence (of Obama’s staff echoing their boss’s) and there’s phony stagecraft – such as Obama pretending to be qualified and care about anything besides playing POTUS, or those crashers wanting to be famous. And then, there’s the media making it possible for all pretenders to succeed and encouraging future ones to try. I am sure balloon boy was the inspiration of the party crashers.

The outrage is pretense too – as more foaming at the mouth makes for better copy.